Business in brief: Software can keep drivers focused

Thursday

Jun 15, 2017 at 2:01 AM

In the near future, your phone might be smart enough to know whether you are driving a car, or going along for the ride.

Anti-distraction software by a tech startup called Cellepathy would automatically go into a restrictive “driver mode” when a phone is within a moving vehicle. Online features such as texts, video, games and social media would be blocked, as well as some or all nonemergency telephone calls.

Your cellphone is like an airplane’s black box. It contains a compass, a gyroscope, an accelerometer and GPS tracking.

Using those features and the software, vehicle passengers could perform a verification task, lasting seven seconds or less, to unlock all the apps in “passenger mode.” For instance, they would hold a phone level and type in a series of numbers.

Sears continues to cut

Sears Holdings Corp. on Tuesday said it would eliminate 400 full-time jobs, with most of the job cuts coming at its suburban Chicago headquarters.

The announcement means Sears’ headcount there has been cut by more than a third since 2011, when it employed 6,200 people at its headquarters and received a package of tax breaks after threatening to leave the state.

Company spokesman Howard Riefs declined to say how many employees work at its headquarters but said the company had already fallen below the number of jobs it was required to maintain as part of the tax break deal.

While the majority of the eliminated positions are in the Chicago-area headquarters, some are in Sears’ field offices. Sears said it already eliminated open positions and reduced contract employees to lessen the impact of layoffs.

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